So the Utah Legislature is upset they don’t have enough time to redraw the congressional district map. The poor babies. This reminds me of the old joke about the boy being tried for murdering his parents, and throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.
If the Republican caucus in the Legislature had done the right thing in the first place, none of this, not the voter initiative, nor the court case, would have been necessary. The Legislature instead chose to be unethical and greedy. They have now been overridden by the voters, and then gotten their hands repeatedly slapped by the courts for ignoring the voters.
Republican legislators, this is 100% on you. You made this mess. You then wasted years of time trying to preserve the mess. You now have to clean it up.
It’s not even that hard. How about this as a first draft: a northern Wasatch Front district starting at Ogden into Salt Lake County, a southern Wasatch Front district from somewhere in Salt Lake County and ending below Provo, a northern Utah district of everything else from Provo north, plus the Uinta Basin, and a Southern Utah district including everything south of Provo except the Uinta Basin. That would need tweaking, but it is better than the map the Republican legislators came up with, and it took me all of five minutes.
Gene Mahalko, Salt Lake City
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